Of course the kids pulled the ocean sensory bin out today, I'm sure this will be a daily hit. Although when Gabe plays he still needs a lot of supervision and guidance because he likes to throw the rocks, and then we both work together to clean them all up... Here is my post about whats in the sensory bin and a closer look.

Yesterday all the kids made their own sail boats, here is the link to my post with the sites on how we made them. Today we had sailboat races in the little pool to try them out!

The kids decided that the shells were not good boats, they just sunk to the bottom...

Ethan brought some boats over to the little buckets and floated them there

Dustin tried adding a whole straw to see what would happen, he really enjoyed floating the boats and figuring what would make some boats sink and others float on the water, he did this for quite some time even after everyone else left!

I figured it was a great time to try a sink float experiment with the kids to. This is the tray with all the things the kids tested.

I used 2 felt sheets (1 labeled sink the other float), the younger kids separated what they thought would sink or float to do their predictions on instead of using the chart I made which I have here for any one who wants it, its just a simple sheet I made up real quick. We talked about what makes things float and other things sink, the girls went through all the items with the kids and they all made their predictions on their sheets, tomorrow we will be learning more about animals that can float in the water and why they float.

Serena going through everything

Taking a closer look

Cody finishing up his worksheet

Dustin deep in concentration

Testing

Ethan very proud of the fact he guessed right!

How smart of Ethan to figure out if he pushed down on some of the floating items they would sink to...

The results... Everything on the purple mat floated and everything on the red mat sunk...

Gabe woke up from his nap with crazy hair lol.. It is so time for a hair cut!!

Gabe's turn to try it! He was having a lot of fun pushing the balls down in the water and watching them come back up to the top

The older kids decided to go for a swim while the little ones kept working!

The kids got to make their own oceans. You can use old water bottles or pop bottles, add what ever things you want in the bottom, aquarium rocks, ocean plastic animals, shells, glitter, sand, etc... next you fill the bottle 2/3 with water and the other 1/3 with either vegetable oil or baby oil, we chose baby oil because its clear, then add a few drops of blue food coloring (we added 3 drops and the water was darker, I wouldn't add more than 3 though), and last hot glue the lids, when dry give to kids and shake up for fun.

This is what the kids had to choose from

Funnels are the best things to get the small stuff inside, like aquarium rocks or glitter!!

Ethan looking very hard at all the stuff he put inside

The squishy animal and glitter stayed floating in the oil and didn't fall to the bottom like everything else

Dustin made edible aquariums to go along with dinner. Make blue jello according to the jigglers recipe pour into clear cups, and when it is partially hardened add gummy fish!! Well lets just say Dustin forgot to add the fish into the jello before it completely hardened (despite mom reminding him a couple times...) so we had edible aquariums with fish jumping out lol...